Goggles
by AllKindsOfWeird
Summary: After four years, Matt finally catches up to Mello. It's not the kind of reunion he expected. Guns, explosions, and Kira make catching up a little bit difficult. MattxMello.
1. The Reunion

A/N: Don't own Death Note or anything having to do with it.

The first few kisses were tentitive and shy but after that we both grew hungry and things escalated at a pace niether of us could anticipate. We were on his bed and I was stradling him, leaning over him, supporting myself with my hands. I did things I would have been too shy to do with out the overwhelming euphoria running through my veins making me burn. I felt my skin was so hot it would burn him, too. If it did, I think he liked it. That was over four years ago. Now, he stood in front of me, hands in his vest pocket, smoking a cigarette.

Four years made him taller, his face thinner, and his list of bad habits a good deal longer, but his eyes had stayed the same. They always would, I knew that.

A full minute passed between us. I was waiting him out, waiting to make him play his move. He blinked once behind those damned ugly goggles, his eyes staring straight at me. I don't know what he saw. Four years changed me, as well, but more obviously than it had changed him. About the only thing I hadn't changed would be my preference for black, chocolate, and my hair.

"Found you." He said finally.

"What?"

"I said, 'Found you'", he repeated, louder.

"I've known we're you've been for the past six weeks."

He looked surprised. Yes, I knew he would do this. Did Matt think he could track me without my knowledge of it? Yes, he's still a child.

"Go home, Matt."

"I was planning on helping you out. You'll need me." He looked far too confident. It was annoying.

"I didn't need L. I didn't need Whammy, the orphanage, Roger, or Near. What makes you think that I would need you?"

"My skills come in high demand in the underworld. I've learned a thing or two about—"

"You're a hacker, I know. You go by the alias 'Trilobyte'. Very clever." It didn't impress me that he learned hacking. He was good, I know. I'd been following him for a while. I'd only decided that this hacker, Trilobyte, was Matt after he broke the security of some gaming company to fix a data error causing game systems to freeze. Now, he did free lance work for money.

The look on Matt's face after I'd stolen his thunder made me smirk. "Go home."

He took a long drag on his cigarette, thinking over his plans.

Matt was not an easily motivated person. Something must be persisting within him for him to come this far in finding me but it wasn't Kira or an obsession with being number one. Matt was a decent person by my standards but lazy as fuck.

"I wanna help." He said simply.

I arched my eyebrow. "I don't care. I'm leaving, Matt. Follow me again and I'll kill you."

He didn't look like he believed me so when he didn't respond I drew my gun out of my pants and pointed it at his face. Slowly, his eyes wided behind his ugly goggles, they moved from the nozzle of the gun to my face. I returned his fearfull look with one of cold anger.

"You understand now." I said. "I'm leaving." I turned and walked to the door. A moment later, as I reached the door, I heard him call my name and I heard his foot steps coming toward me. I'd warned him.

I fired one shot straight behind me. I could hear him yell in surprise and I could hear him hit the floor.

I turned around to see if the message had sunk in. Matt took his time standing up. He pulled his goggles off and examined them. They very top left was cracked open. Several pieces had fallen to the floor and remain laying there. I had to smile at that. I'm just such a damn good shot. I'd like to see Near pull off that kind of angle without killing someone.

I walked back to Matt and punched him in the side of the head with my gun. I grabbed his goggles out of his shaking hands.

"If you follow me," the words came out velvet and slow, "I will kill you." _Learn this lesson, Matt_, I thought.

I left. He didn't try to follow this time. _Good,_ I thought, _I'll need him later._ I still had Matt's stupid, ugly, broken goggles when I returned to my mafia headquarters. Rod was on the phone with one of his platinum hoes hanging off one of his buff arms.

"Where've you been?" Rod asked.

"Recruiting." I tossed Matt's goggles onto the couch and looked at them. I could still see his eyes behind them.


	2. Or Not

He almost shot my face off. Fuck this! Fuck it. It was a bad idea and I should have known that from that start. I should never have left my comfy room at Whammy's and I sure as shit never should have gone looking for Mello. For some unknown reason I was deluded enough to think that he'd actually want me around. That we could pal around like old times causing mischief and not getting caught. This person that I'd encountered wasn't Mello as I remembered him from our school days. Four years certainly did things to people. Especially four years spent apart after thinking you'd gotten to know someone so well. I was wrong… nearly dead wrong, heh.

I ran out of that old warehouse as fast as my tar-coated lungs would allow. Which, looking back, was not all that fast. I'm pretty sure Roger could have outstripped me… though, Roger isn't a geezer to be underestimated. He's kinda like Wammy was I guess. All sorts of secrets.

The encounter with Mello's bullets certainly got me thinking. Maybe I never really knew Mello at all. Wait a sec… of course I never really knew Mello. One of the very first things I ever noticed about him when we'd met so many moons ago was just how tightly he guarded himself. In our years of what I had taken for friendship I had become comfortable believing maybe, just maybe, Mello would open up to the person I considered to be his best friend. And now I had this gilded memory over what our friendship actually was. That… and now I needed new goggles.

My goal for today was simply to find a nice place to stay before heading to New York. I found a little locally run motel to crash for the night and stow my crap until I did. Taking my computer and some of my other favorite electronics I decided to do some work. And by work I mean setting up viruses, taking them down, playing world of warcraft, napping, and seeing who else was willing to pay money for the awesome and unmatched skillz of Trilobyte, the master hacker. Nothing interesting today. Just some guy who wanted me to retrieve information that he accidentally saved on his wife's computer. Not worth my time. One time a guy who I'd done work for wanted to get back the money he paid me and he tried to hack into the account I had him send it to. I let him get so far as to the page displaying just how much I had tucked away. He tried extracting that amount and every time he did, he was actually depositing it from his own account. So, the idiot didn't catch on to what was happening until after the third try. Ha! Well, now I have an extra bit of cash to line my coffin with.

The next flight back to New York was actually taking-off at 8 a.m. Considering it was 2 a.m. when I found this flight I decided that the best course of action would be to sleep until I woke up (whenever that might be) and take a flight when I felt like it. Yup, fool proof. You are a genius, Matt, tried and true.

I woke up at about 4 p.m. the next day. Odd time of day if you think about it. I didn't feel like searching for flights again. I did feel like searching for food. Almost getting your face shot off does that to a person.

I love diners. They've got an anonymous atmosphere to them. No one knows who you are or what you're about when you go into a diner. You know what to expect from the food… expect nothing because in a diner it can be as hit or miss as shooting at someone. Ok, maybe I'm still mad about that getting shot at thing. Who really expects to get shot at though?

The server waiting on me was a cute girl in her mid-twenties. Maybe she was a grad school student paying off loans. Maybe she was a high school dropout with waiting tables as her only available option for work. I didn't know and I didn't particularly care but she was easy on the eyes if you know what I mean. Real natural looking. A rare sight this close to L.A. I ordered a steak sandwich with a side of onion rings with a wink. I'm not normally that type of person but I wasn't really feeling myself. I was feeling sorta out of body actually. Almost like I was watching someone else do the things I was doing. I was flirting with this girl with absolutely no intention of following through. I just wanted to get my mind off of other things. Like seeing death in Mello's eyes.

I'd never killed anyone. I'd never imagined that Mello had either. Considering the position he was in and the determination he has, I realize that I don't really think things through realistically. How can Mello have changed this much? So much meaner, so much fiercer, cooler somehow… scarier too, though less volatile. Maybe having a gun means you scream less. Most of all, he didn't want me around. I wonder what happened to him in those years. Somehow, I get the feeling that I might never find out.

My sandwich was everything a diner sandwich should be. Quickly made, fried and filled with grease, and just the thing for making sure you never want to eat whatever it was you just ate ever again. I wandered around the town a while before heading back to the dinky motel for yet another night of spotty sheets and unidentifiable weird smells.

What was the date anyway? I looked at my wristwatch and read November 7th. I don't know why but I felt like hanging around for the next three days or so. Why not? L.A. is a cool place afterall.


End file.
